Report: Good Historical GeographyAuthor(s): Roy LewisSource: Area, Vol. 7, No. 4 (1975), pp. 247-248Published by: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20001024 .

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Good historical geography

Report of the conference of the Historical Geography Research Group held at the Uni versity of Liverpool, 23-25 May, 1975.

A fine day, it was, on Friday 23 May when we clambered into the Professor's charabanc, all set for the Spring outing-we had a party booking for the Historical Geography Research Group's weekend conference at Liverpool. But were we prepared? As the familiar sights receded ... Brithdir, Bala, Corwen, Queensferry ... and as we anxiously thumbed our reports of the Windsor Great Park meeting, so trepidation mounted, for our deficiencies were many: not one pin-striped trouser, croquet stick, or recent haircut did we possess. However, the promise of the programme and the knowledge that we had paid our deposits, were forces which drove us on to our destination, overriding the fear that we might be ostracized to the fringe belt of scholarship. Of course, our fears were not realized. We knew that everything would be alright as soon as we set foot in the Feathers Hotel and heard the resonant utterings which give so

much character to spoken English. And everything was alright. This conference, which offered nine papers on aspects

of nineteenth-century society to sixty or so participants, was of high quality in content and organization. Its success was due in no small part to the enthusiasm and effort of the local organizers, P. Laxton and C. Pooley, and the hospitality of the Department of Geography at Liverpool University.

The proceedings were opened on the Friday evening with a guest lecture by P. Laslett (Cambridge). This eloquent rendering of ' Family structure and industrialization in nineteenth-century Britain' focused on the tenacity of mean family size and the solidarity of the nuclear family under the pressures of demographic and economic change. His talk, which was pitched at the aggregate national level over a long time span (c. 1770-1920), provided a broad backcloth to the more temporally and spatially constrained papers which were scheduled for the next day.

Four of these papers were directly concerned with the internal residential patterns of nineteenth-century towns, and they were brought together to form a cohesive Saturday morning session. Although sharing much common ground, as witnessed by the number of times W. A. Armstrong's occupational classification was mentioned, each paper had its own particular nuance with regard to emphasis or technique. The paper by H. Carter and S. Wheatley (Aberystwyth) was designed to examine the emerging internal structure of the industrial town of Merthyr Tydfil. In contrast to those settlements in South Wales which had industrial enterprises grafted onto medi eval kernels, as shown by the example of Neath, Merthyr developed out of a number of late eighteenth-century nuclei. The authors stressed that their analysis of the fusion

of these separate settlements was in its early stages, but some preliminary groupings of sub-areas, based on data for enumeration districts, showed that broad residential and commercial zones could be discerned by 1851. Another South Wales town, Cardiff, provided the data for A. Williams (LSE). The emphasis in his talk was not the spatial features which characterized this borough town when it was overtaken by port develop

ment in the nineteenth-century, but the techniques which might be used to analyse and describe the pattern of social groupings. The experimental technique which had been adopted for Cardiff was Smallest Space Analysis and the greater part of the paper was concerned with the selection of those variables which related to social status and the interpretation of derived results. The other two papers in the morning session also drew on Census data to highlight intra-urban variations, but each contributed particular viewpoints. K. Cowlard (City of London Polytechnic), using the case study of Wakefield, stressed the role of social forces in shaping urban form, an argument which was well illustrated with the polar sub-districts of St John's and the Nelson,

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248 Good historical geography

Union, New Street area. A. Dingsdale (Trent Polytechnic) placed emphasis on another facet of urban form-the impact of varying landownership policies on the develop

ment of new residential districts. It was shown that the interplay between the social and economic values of land was a powerful explanatory mechanism in residential growth to the west and south of Halifax.

At various points in the morning session mention was made of general migration into urban areas and the origins of particular migrant groups. Thus, the scene was set for the first two papers of the afternoon. C. Pooley, batting on his home wicket and not far from his new pitch (Lancaster), discussed the attractive power of Liverpool to certain migrant groups, as revealed by a 10% sample from the Census enumerators' books for 1871. Following a short summary of a model of the variables affecting the composition of migration streams, he examined two aspects in detail; the socio economic and occupational characteristics of migrants, both of which were shown to be selective in their operation. The second study was from M. Brayshay (Exeter) who examined the Camborne/Redruth/St Just areas in Cornwall, which were characterized by out-migration in the second half of the nineteenth century. In addition to outlining the general features of emigration consequent upon a decline in mining, he went on to assess the impact on household size and structure.

The afternoon session was concluded by two contributions which moved into pas tures new: religion and language. First, B. Greaves (C. F. Mott College, Liverpool) presented some of the salient findings from his studies of Methodism in Yorkshire, 1740-1851. This balanced paper, which was prefaced by a section on data sources, provided an insight into the geography of religion at a number of scales, from the national patterns of observance, through case studies of urban and rural districts, down to the level of Methodist circuits. Whereas Methodism provided the subject

matter for this paper it helped to preserve the subject matter for the second speaker, W. T. R. Pryce (Open University), who looked at the differential contraction of the Welsh language, 1750 to the early 1900s. The superb maps which accompanied this paper summarized what must be the most authoritative description of the spatial vicissitudes of the language which has appeared to date.

Saturday evening was set aside for a general seminar on ' Geographical approaches to the study of nineteenth-century society '. To avoid the pitfalls of a free-for-all, the session was given structure through the chairmanship of R. Lawton (Liverpool) who called on two speakers, J. H. Johnson (Lancaster) and G. Crossick (Hull), to draw out a number of themes from the papers. The major issues which were raised in their short statements and in the ensuing discussion were the problems associated with scales of analysis in historical enquiry, and the interpretation of ' status' in resi dential differentiation. Of the two issues, it was the second which generated most discussion since participants had placed different shades of meaning on the word, ranging from straight occupational classification through to standing in social relation ships.

This evening seminar concluded the formal discussions but not the programme. On the last day the local organizers led morning and afternoon excursions in inner and outer Liverpool.

Since my departure on the Sunday afternoon 1 have been trying to think up a trendy title for this report, but in vain. The one clear impression I have of the outing is that it was good historical geography-so that is the title. A particular affection the Welsh have for that subject, for as R. S. Thomas observed in Welsh Landscape, ' You cannot live in the present, at least not in Wales'.

Roy Lewis University College of Wales Aberystwyth

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